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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23523598">Keep Going</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempestRising/pseuds/TempestRising'>TempestRising</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>COVID-19, Child Neglect, Death in the Family, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Neglected Peter, Nurses are heroes, Pandemics, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Sick Character, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, coronavirus verse, if that's a thing yet, super heroes are also heroes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:36:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,329</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23523598</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempestRising/pseuds/TempestRising</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It happened so swiftly, this spreading thing. Later, when Peter was older, he would look back on his childhood of tumult and chaos and think that there had never been anything like it. The Battle of New York, getting bitten, The Blip - but they were several years away from the Blip.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>First there was the virus.</i></p><p> </p><p>Or: Peter's alone in the apartment when he discovers an enemy Spider-Man can't defeat: a global pandemic.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Michelle Jones &amp; Ned Leeds &amp; Peter Parker, Michelle Jones &amp; Peter Parker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Early April</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>"If you're going through hell, keep going.'"</p>
  <p>
  <i>
    <b>- Winston Churchill</b></i></p>
</div><i></i><br/><p>.</p><p>.</p><p>First they closed down the school.</p><p>It happened so swiftly, this spreading thing. Later, when Peter was older and Tony Stark was gone and the Avengers had quietly passed on to second and third generations, he would look back on his childhood of tumult and chaos and think that there had never been anything like it. The Battle of New York, getting bitten, The Blip - but they were several years away from the Blip.</p><p>First there was the virus.</p><p>It came from...well, in a world of aliens and mad scientists, it didn't really matter where it came from, but it came from China, and it hopped borders, and it got on planes and boats, and it laid dormant in people's lungs until all the sudden there were old men in South Dakota who'd never been to China in their life nor heard of Wuhan nor indeed ever met a person of Chinese origin who had this virus, this thing inside of them. And the virus moved and it moved and it moved and hospitals filled up...slowly at first. And then all at once.</p><p>So first, they closed down the school.</p><p>The students knew about it the day it was set to happen. On Monday Peter went to Academic Decathlon and helped a couple kids on the stage crew move pieces around for the upcoming production of <i>Grease</i> and he went over to Ned's house and built a LEGO army and he swung around the city as Spider-Man and then on Tuesday none of that happened.</p><p>Instead, some teachers passed out packets of math problems and some teachers said to 'stay healthy' and some teachers said 'this will all blow over soon' and kids gathered at lunch to exchange information they didn't have. Someone said there was a cure in Seattle. Someone said this would all be over by April. Someone said this was basically the flu, and if the school didn't shut down for the flu why should it shut down for this.</p><p>"What about APs?" Ned asked, staring at the calendar on his phone.</p><p>"APs aren't for months."</p><p>"What if it lasts months?"</p><p>Peter snorted and hugged Ned. He remembered that, the easy touching, because soon after...days after...the world stopped hugging. And shaking hands. And touching people on the shoulder. And having face to face conversations. And gathering in groups of more than two people. The world just sort of...stopped.</p><p>At first it was fine. Peter texted Mr. Stark and said he could increase his hours at the "internship" but of course Tony was out of town, yelling at someone in Atlanta about how <i>JARVIS had predicted this months ago</i> and <i>they're way past containment</i> and<i> you're sentencing people to death</i> and even though Tony said his lab was open, Peter felt weird just traipsing over alone.</p><p>So instead he cleaned the small, small apartment. Twice. Three times. He rearranged the cabinets. He emptied out his closet. Ned came over in the beginning and then several days in he stopped coming over. They talked on the phone. They watched bad television. Peter helped his older neighbors get groceries. He left letters in their mailboxes, saying that if they needed anything they should text him, and he'd go out and get it from the store and leave it outside their doors. He kept busy going to the pharmacy and elbowing his way through the last crowded place left: the super market.</p><p>The news changed. Two weeks. Two months? Six months?</p><p>Six months of what, Peter thought. A week ago he'd been in school. Now New York was being told to stay inside.</p><p>Spider-Man was being told to stay inside.</p><p>Someone posted a video essay about how Spider-Man had given the city the virus. The Daily Bugle made him solely responsible for the pandemic.</p><p>He stopped going out at night. There was no crime to stop, anyway, and his Spidey-Sense was practically useless, anyway, raising up at every ambulance siren, which were going off constantly.</p><p>One morning he went outside to pick up his neighbor's cat food and was shouted at by an older gentleman in a mask for being "cavalier during a crisis" and "Don't you know that people are dying" and "entitled kids acting like they can't get sick."</p><p>And Peter ducked his head. Because. Well. He couldn't get sick. He hadn't been sick since he turned into Spider-Man. And he felt ridiculously, vastly useless sitting in the tiny apartment. There was nothing to do on the super hero front because all the other heroes had day jobs. The remnants of SHIELD had taken over managing and containing, an international endeavor that called Thor, Clint, and Natasha away to liaison. Wakanda was offering aid, but Rhodey had gone to Africa a week ago to try to coordinate relief efforts with equity in mind. Bruce had been gone for months, somewhere in Asia, probably right in the center of all the outbreaks. And Tony...well, Tony was banking on data and technology to save the day, as usual. He was barking at other CEOs and pumping out ventilators and berating the president publicly for mismanagement.</p><p>In other words, no one was really thinking about Peter in his walk-up in Queens, dying soul first. Because this wasn't a problem Spider-Man could fix. This was a problem for scientists and politicians and agents and...</p><p>and nurses.</p><p>Just as Peter had more time on his hands than ever, Aunt May had less. She put in eighty hours the first week. She watched people die. She always watched people die, but the numbers...it was like the Battle of New York all over again, except that had been one day. One monumentally awful day, and afterwards they were all scared but also brave and angry.</p><p>This was day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day and so many deaths. Body bags in the hallway.</p><p>"Some of the other nurses are staying downtown," Aunt May said. "A hotel's donating rooms. So we don't get other people sick."</p><p>"You can't get me sick." Peter cut into the fresh bread. One of the ladies he delivered groceries to gave him a sour dough starter and, having nothing else to do, he cared for the little spore until it became bread.</p><p>"You don't know that," Aunt May pushed her glasses up her nose.</p><p>Sometimes Peter hated being sixteen. He felt a hundred. He wanted to cry. "You aren't supposed to leave a minor alone," Peter pointed out. "I think that's the law."</p><p>He stared at his bread as he said it, because he knew he was being selfish. All these other people needed Aunt May, head nurse extraordinaire. And he just wanted someone to watch Netflix with. He finished all the school work his teachers had assigned and didn't feel like reading, or building things, or watching movies. He felt like sleeping and refreshing the death count on Twitter.</p><p>"If I got you sick," Aunt May said, "I couldn't live with myself."</p><p>She did it out of love, out of a deep ocean of love. Peter knew that. Just like he knew that Tony's bluster and Bruce's frustration and Rhodey's strained competence was their acts of love. They were super heroes. They saved people.</p><p>Aunt May was in contact with the virus all day long. She was a super hero. And her way of saving people - of saving Peter - was staying away. A hotel room near the hospital. She'd stay with the other nurses there four days a week, then shower and come home and shower again and see Peter for thirty-six hours before going back.</p><p>So one morning Aunt May walked out the door and didn't come back for a few days.</p><p>Peter dropped off food for his downstairs neighbor, knocked, and made himself walk away before the door opened. He went up to the roof at night, not as Spider-Man, and listened to the sirens and to the empty city. He tried not to call Ned more than once a day. He tried not to call Tony more than once a week. He was fine. He was fine. He just had to stay inside.</p><p>Day after day after day after day after day after day after day.</p><p>On the empty streets, the trees started to turn green.</p><p>A lot of people lost a lot of money. A lot of people lost jobs. Peter worried about that, but not too much. He had never had much money. He had never had a job. In his building, being alone together was getting to people. Couples started screaming at each other. Parents started screaming at children. Peter listened to a woman on the sixth floor get drunk and list every flaw in her daughter, starting with how ugly she was. He didn't want to listen. The city was too quiet. There was nothing else to hear.</p><p>Things missing from the stores: chicken, alcohol, yogurt, toilet paper, apples, canned food.</p><p>Peter scrolled through dog adoption websites. He ran across rooftops. He went out as Spider-Man, once a day, all over the city, and was yelled at for being in the way. He went out as Peter and was side-eyed for being young and mask-less and healthy.</p><p>Someone in the building got sick, a fifty-ish year old man with a runner's body and bad asthma. His daughter was sixteen, and Peter didn't know her because she didn't go to Midtown but they stood awkwardly far apart in the hallway one day. The girl said her father was sweating through the night, was so cold but sweating, that he was still breathing okay so they didn't go to the hospital, that she didn't know what she'd do if he went to the hospital. She had grandparents in Long Island. She couldn't go to Long Island. She had been exposed. She might kill them.</p><p>The girl hugged herself. "I don't even know who to call. Like, my mom died? A long time ago? And Dad is super healthy or he <i>was</i> and now I'm just like - I can't plan a funeral. Can we even have a funeral? Is that even allowed?"</p><p>No weddings, no birthday parties, no family dinners, no graduation celebrations, no prom. No funerals. The city couldn't stop people from dying or people from grieving but they damn well were going to stop people from doing it within six feet of each other.</p><p>Peter wanted to hug this girl. He knew deep in his bones that he couldn't get the virus. He was pretty sure they were both young and healthy enough. He took a step forward and the girl shrank back.</p><p>"Do you need anything?" Peter held up his list from the older tenants. "I'm going out anyway."</p><p>"Tylenol and ibuprofin, but all the stores are out. I checked CVS but they said their shipments -"</p><p>Peter went into his apartment. He had a big bottle of Tylenol for the sore muscles he got as Spider-Man. He tossed it down the hall to the girl, who caught it and hugged it close. "Oh - this is too much. I just...A little bottle would be okay?"</p><p>"Keep it. I'll get more later."</p><p>"When this is all over."</p><p>The common refrain. Peter made himself nod, even though he suspected that this would never be over, that the scars from this month and this season and this year would imprint themselves deep on the world, a tear in history. Like the towers falling. Like armies marching across foreign lands. He was living on the pages of a history book.</p><p>He was sick of making history. He went out into the streets. He bought only from the local bodegas, as if he could single-handedly keep them in business. He ate a grilled cheese panini and sat on the curb and watched a bunch of workers in protective clothing turn a truck into a makeshift morgue.</p><p>There was no Advil at CVS, nor at any CVS within swinging distance. Instead, he bought small packets from the bodegas and stuffed them into the grocery bags he dropped off for the neighbors.</p><p>(The grocery bags were all plastic. Peter had reusable bags, because MJ would have a conniption if he didn't, but when he brought one into a store they said they couldn't pack in a reusable bag, that the city was back to single-use plastic, and Peter couldn't help but think they were trading one problem for another. This was supposed to be the year they got rid of plastic. The year they saved the polar bears. Now it was the year they could barely save themselves.)</p><p>One time he knocked on a door to announce a delivery and it actually opened. This was a week into Aunt May being gone. The only human person he'd talked to was the girl in the hallway. Now he was face-to-face with a short, stooped woman in a red sweater and house slippers. Peter took five steps back, feeling radioactive. "Sorry - I mean, I got your groceries, Mrs. Jo, but the store was out of chicken again."</p><p>"You're a good boy, Peter. Did you get the money in your mailbox?"</p><p>"Yes, ma'am, the change is in the bag."</p><p>"Oh, Peter." Mrs. Jo grinned as she hefted the plastic into her arms. "You're a good one. Some people are neighbors, you know. And some people you just live next to."</p><p>Mrs. Jo used to try to fill him up with cookies and lemonade and Peter would have to think of some excuse or be stuck watching Judge Judy and looking at albums all afternoon. Now he desperately hoped for a chance to sit at a table with someone.</p><p>Mrs. Jo closed the door. Peter went back to the apartment and watched the ambulances speed down the street.</p><p>Captain America was on television urging people to stay home. "People say this is like fighting a war. Well, I actually fought in the big one, and in some ways this is harder. We are a communal species. When something hurts us we have an urge to get together. The world looks different now than it did a month ago, but we have weathered storms before, and we will weather this one. We will do it together."</p><p>Bruce told people over and over he wasn't an epidemiologist, but he and JARVIS had created a prediction model for the virus that had been spot on so far. "This thing is going to get worse before it gets better. Just remember that the best thing you could do to protect the most vulnerable among us is stay home."</p><p>Wakanda tried to roll out aid but even one of the richest countries on earth was having a problem figuring out how to do adequate testing. The virus worked its way into the country and then spread and spread and spread. It did the same in America. In Spain. In Italy.</p><p>This wasn't something a super hero could fix, but a good number of the heroes were also scientists. Tony and Reed Richards put aside their differences long enough to hole up in a lab together. This time in Seattle. Still not in New York.</p><p>"You doing alright, kid?" Tony answered distractedly last time Peter tried to call.</p><p>"Oh, yeah. It's just, you know, on the news they keep telling us to check in with our elders."</p><p>"Ha ha."</p><p>Peter tipped out his sourdough onto a floured surface. The thing about having a starter is that you had to use it constantly. Peter had never eaten so much bread. "Do I have to teach you how to use the video chat on your computer?"</p><p>"I'm hanging up now. Tell your hot aunt she's my personal hero. Does her hospital have enough gloves? Masks? I can reroute supplies."</p><p>"She'd hate you for doing that."</p><p>"She'd hate me more if she ended up dead."</p><p>Peter stopped punching the dough. He stared at the phone. Tony must have noticed the pause because he stopped swiping at something just off screen. "Aw, kid, I didn't mean that."</p><p>"No, I know. I just feel so useless."</p><p>"You and me both, Pete. You got enough food? No shortages yet?"</p><p>Peter shook his head. He breathed in yeast.</p><p>"You tell me the second that changes, okay? I know I haven't been around much these past weeks. Not that we could do anything together, anyway. The world's on hold for now."</p><p>Except...it wasn't quite. Rent was due tomorrow and Aunt May had made a tight, pinched face when she wrote out the check three days ago. Other bills were coming due. Peter had more money going out than ever and no money coming in. MJ joked about selling her plasma. Peter was pretty sure someone might notice how radically different his blood looked. Then people would really think Spider-Man had given them the virus.</p><p>First there was no hugging, then no hand-shaking, then no touching, then no being in the same room together, then talking could be dangerous. Now people were saying you should try not to breathe around other people. Masks were out, and now they were in. Peter took this as proof that no one knew a damn thing.</p><p>Late at night, a sit-com laugh track quiet in the background. Sweatshirted and huddled. Peter stared at his phone and at Ned on the other side. He was starting to really hate the shape of his screen. He was starting to really hate screens in general. "I don't like that you're all alone." Ned's empathetic eyes all scrunched up. Ned had zero poker face. "Do you want to come over here?"</p><p>"I haven't exactly been quarantining. Somehow getting groceries for one neighbor turned into being the delivery boy for the whole building. And what about your mom? Doesn't she have that Lupus thing?"</p><p>"But, I mean," Ned glanced at the camera, as if wondering if he was being watched. Maybe he was. Maybe they all were. So much data in such a short amount of time. Screens upon screens. "It's not like you can get sick, right? Because of the thing."</p><p>"I could be a carrier."</p><p>"I'd take that risk. Tell me you have food."</p><p>Peter held up the loaf of bread. "Bad news, though. I think the store is running out of flour."</p><p>Ned snorted. "Did you see Cap on <i>The Daily Show</i> last night? He said we should all plant Victory gardens."</p><p>"I love him," Peter grinned. "He's my favorite grandpa." He thought about the fire escape. How long could he have herbs and maybe tomatoes out there before the landlord or fire department declared it all a hazard?</p><p>In these times? As Ned said...he'd take that risk.</p><p>Peter made morning and evening rounds throughout the building. If someone needed something, they'd usually stick a list and some money in an envelope in his mail box. Sometimes, if they were sick or paranoid, they would stick the envelope under the door in lieu of venturing all the way down the stairs. Whenever he was in the hallway, he would linger, waiting to see if that teenage girl ever came out again. But she never did.</p><p>He thought about sticking a letter under her door, but what would he even say? Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers.</p><p>Spider-Man went out among the buildings at night. Everything was empty except for hospitals which were so, so full. The city had graduated medical students early so they could help in the hospitals. They'd pulled surgeons and oncologists and radiologists and pediatricians from their specialties and put them in ICUs. Nurses kept getting sick. Everyone kept getting sick.</p><p>One night he was seen by a couple of interns on a smoke break. "The fuck you doing here, man? This look like a fucking joke to you?"</p><p>Peter sputtered behind the mask. "I - I just want to help - "</p><p>"Unless you know how to work a ventilator, do what everyone else is doing. Stay the fuck home."</p><p>When Aunt May came home, if she came home, he cleaned the bathroom until it shined with bleach. And then he cleaned it again. Usually Aunt May would tell him stories about work, all the wonderful strangeness of New York that coalesced in her hospital. Now she just curled under a blanket on the far side of the room and fell asleep when they re-watched <i>Parks and Recreation.</i></p><p>In the morning Peter offered her homemade bread spread with butter and honey. He slid it on a plate across the table to her. Aunt May refused to touch him. She had her head pillowed on her arms. She was already in scrubs. "Oh, sweetheart. It's worse than you can imagine."</p><p>Then Aunt May left, and the apartment was empty again.</p><p>Day after day after day after day after day.</p><p>There was still school, but it was a stilted, abbreviated school. Books to read and essays to write, but the labs Peter loved were hard to move online and so they talked concepts of chemistry instead which, okay, but theory without practice didn't lead to a deep understanding. Harry Potter and his battles with Umbridge in Defense Against the Dark Arts had taught Peter that.</p><p>Ned, who was always a better coder than Peter. had taken the time to sink deeply into some self-taught techniques he'd been putting off. He designed an app to expand Peter's shopping efforts. He wanted to call it "Babies Helping Boomers" but thought that might alienate both groups. It allowed for senior citizens or anyone home bound or immunocompromised to post their needs, and other people, mostly bored high schoolers, could drop the items off. Ned was working on getting payment methods added to the app. Right now it was focused on Queens but Ned wanted to expand it at least to the whole city. He thought it might be a cool project to show off to internships. You know. After all this was over.</p><p>Peter instantly became obsessed. You could make a profile and got little stickers for doing one, five, ten jobs. You could get a streak for picking up a job a day. You could message the person who added the job, telling them where stuff was dropped off or saying that the store was out of chicken, would pork do?</p><p>The sun was up until well after seven o'clock. It was one of the nicest springs anyone could remember. Peter learned which streets had been turned into morgues and avoided those.</p><p>Day after day.</p><p>Aunt May didn't come home that week. She had a fever. She told him not to worry. He swung by the hotel she was at and left her some lemon and ginger tea and a new loaf of sourdough bread.</p><p>Now everyone in the city was wearing masks. Peter saw more than one Spider-Man mask staring at him in the grocery store. One man walking a goldendoodle wore an old-fashioned plague doctor mask, the kind with the long nose and ominous outlook. Peter saw him coming and crossed the street. He wasn't talking to very many people.</p><p>After day after day after day.</p><p>Aunt May called. She coughed into the crook of her elbow. "Hey, hon." It was a video chat call. He could see how wan she looked. He reminded himself it had been less than a month since the world made sense. "I've got Tony Stark on the line. Sorry to drop this on both of you at once, I just..." she coughed again. Tony Stark's head popped into view in a tiny square of the call. "I need to get this all straight."</p><p>"May? Is this about the paperwork my lawyer just forwarded to me?"</p><p>Aunt May nodded. She had a tissue crumpled in her hand.</p><p>"And Peter doesn't know anything about it?"</p><p>He really hated being sixteen. No one told him anything. "Peter doesn't know what?"</p><p>"I just worry about you, sweetheart, you know that. What if something happens to me?"</p><p>"Nothing will happen Aunt May, come on..."</p><p>"We never changed our will. After Ben died. But I need to know you're taken care of."</p><p>Peter thought about the girl in the hallway. But that girl had grandparents somewhere in the world. Grandparents that could advise long distance, at least. He had...he had...</p><p>May. That was it.</p><p>"You don't worry about that now, May. Stark Medical is coordinating some supply chains in the absence of any semblance of leadership from the White House. You tell me what you need, you got it."</p><p>"Just the paperwork." May coughed. Her lips were chapped to hell. Someone in the background called for her. Then called again. "I'm so sorry guys. I gotta-"</p><p>"Go be a hero," Tony advised. But he stayed on the line after May disconnected.</p><p>Peter added some more flour to his sourdough and tried to remember what he'd learned in health class about managing anxiety and panic attacks.</p><p>"The paperwork is about assuming legal guardianship of you in the event of May's death," Tony said with his usual candor. "I - god I wish I was in the lab. Making something explode. Why are these things so much easier to talk about when I'm staring at a socket wrench?"</p><p>"You don't have to do that. Like, at all. I didn't know May was going to do that. That's so..." Overstepping. Outlandish. Too good to be true. "May just likes to plan for the worst."</p><p>Tony swore at someone off screen. "Sorry. I just - it's crowded here. Let me find...an abandoned hallway! This will do. Peter. Pete. Underroos. Give it to me straight. Is there no one else?"</p><p>"Just me and May. Since Uncle Ben died."</p><p>"You have that tragic backstory down pat," Tony said. One of those things he said out loud without meaning to, like he had no ability to use the voice inside his head. "Like talking to Cap."</p><p>Peter rolled a bit of dough between his fingers and reminded himself that this dough was alive, and outside there were trees that were alive, and birds that had dinosaur skeletons getting ready to lay eggs. And across the country, there was Tony Stark, his hero, eyebrows knit together in worry. "You really don't have to sign those papers, Mr. Stark. I'll be fine! See?" He held up the jar. "Sourdough."</p><p>"Caring for a spore and caring for yourself is two different beasts. Jesus, kid. Of course I'm signing those papers. Are you sure you're okay?"</p><p>"You know us young people, Mr. Stark. Just over here going on Spring Break and spreading corona left and right. How's Reed?"</p><p>"Don't you mean 'how's Johnny?'"</p><p>Peter rolled his eyes. He'd made the mistake of calling Johnny Storm cute one time and now Mr. Stark was on a mission to see them together. "I'm hanging up now. Take your heart medication or whatever."</p><p>"Oh I will," Tony grinned but it suddenly turned more serious. "Seems like all the sudden I have a lot to live for."</p><p>Day after day after day.</p><p>Ned's app expanded to parts of New Jersey. The app was free but after a few thousand downloads he added two ads and donated the revenue to Doctors Without Borders. Peter was so proud he could burst and showed his pride by walking ten or twelve miles a day, delivery after delivery. The app had a scoreboard and he was in the lead with the most trips.</p><p>He dropped off care baskets for Aunt May every night. Noodles from her favorite take out place, bread, tea, honey, bananas, baked goods. He added extras. He put in notes from people he delivered to. On his profile on the app he mentioned his aunt was a nurse, and some people (or, more likely, people's kids) made cards.</p><p>According to the news, the worst was yet to come. But Peter stopped watching the news. The days turned to weeks turned to a new month. He lay on the roof under a ridiculously blue sky and MJ sat on the other side of the roof, and they listened to Post Malone and talked about how scared they were and how MJ had found a book of poetry she'd forgotten about, and how Peter's sourdough had outgrown its jar, and how Ned had been interviewed (virtually) by several fairly legitimate news outlets. </p><p>MJ inched as close as anyone dared now. Ten feet. Eight feet. Six feet. She was still so far away but it felt as intimate as a kiss. </p><p>"When this is over..." MJ began, and then stopped. Whatever she was about to say sounded too much like a promise that couldn't be kept.</p><p>From far below, in the empty city streets, sirens wailed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Late June</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The weather gets warmer, America erupts into protests, and...</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"Peter didn't see Tony again until the end of June, at the funeral."</i></p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>"We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return. We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again."</p>
  <p>-<i><b>Queen Elizabeth, Pandemic Address, April 2020</b></i></p>
  <p>.***.</p>
</div><p>The world changing had been like a clap of thunder. Like a lightswitch. Like Peter being bitten, all those terrible years ago, waking up and knowing he was going to live a life very different from the one he'd always imagined. A life like something he saw in comic books, or in the movies.</p><p>The virus was like that. It felt massive and apocalyptic. It felt like a rend in time. Peter was in New York City and residents of a certain age had only one thing to compare it to: it was like watching the towers fall, and knowing the skyline that had once seemed so absolute would never be the same.</p><p>Except after the virus the towers fell one brick at a time. For all of April Peter delivered groceries and watching comforting old sit-coms and wandered the ghost town of New York. MJ gave him words from a therapist she followed on Twitter. An out-of-body experience. A fugue state. They were all being traumatized. They could feel it happening.</p><p>Peter had rolled his eyes, hoping MJ couldn't see him from her vantage point six feet away. They were on the roof again. It was early May and even New York smelled like flowers. "If I was going to be traumatized, I think it might have happened the first time I jumped off a building."</p><p>He'd confessed the Spider-Man secret during one of the long, lonely nights. MJ had been surprisingly, almost disappointingly, cavalier about the whole thing.</p><p>"You can be traumatized by more than one thing."</p><p>Peter shrugged, tipping his head back to feel the warm sun. MJ had come over early with some basil cuttings, which she claimed could regrow in water. He thought, idly, about picking up some more deliveries on Ned's app, but couldn't bring himself to leave the roof. Or MJ.</p><p>"Hey Peter?"</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"How's your aunt?'</p><p>An anvil on the chest. It happened any time he forgot about May, even for a moment. Because how could he be here, planning a garden and thinking about sliding closer to MJ than social distancing allowed when - "Today is her third day on the ventilator.'</p><p>"Oh - Peter - I - " MJ fumbled. She was so rarely at a loss for words. "I didn't know it was that serious."</p><p>"People get off ventilators," Peter said, quickly. "Sometimes."</p><p>"Of course! And - I mean, she's so young."</p><p>Peter flicked a rock across the roof. Then, because it felt good to throw something, he heaved a cinderblock towards the closed rooftop door. MJ flinched when it rolled and broke apart. "Sorry. I just - I'm a superhero. And I can't even see her. I'm not even allowed inside the hospital. I brought her some bread yesterday, one of my loaves. A whole basket of stuff. Some pajamas. I brought it to the hospital and they said it wasn't allowed it because it might be contaminated."</p><p>He threw another block. He wanted to punch a hole in the sky.</p><p>A soft hand on his arm.</p><p>MJ had closed the six feet of space between them. She was the first person to touch him in almost three weeks. Peter picked up another rock and MJ grabbed that arm, too. She was in his lap. Facing him. Her mask down below her chin.</p><p>Peter blinked. He had a gorgeous girl in his arms and he was about to bawl. "Everyone leaves me."</p><p>He thought of his parents. The memory of a hand on his cheek, of being carried to bed. He thought of Uncle Ben, who told jokes during dinner and had a kind word for everyone. Of Mr. Stark, who'd promised protection but was currently on the other side of the country, maybe even world.</p><p>MJ hugged him then. Breaking all the CDC guidelines. Peter didn't care. It was worth anything to feel her heartbeat against his chest. "I'm not going anywhere," she breathed.</p><p>They stayed on the roof until the sky pinkened. Until it was full dark with a sprinkling of stars.</p><p>Day after day.</p><p>MJ had a toothbrush in the bathroom and a pillow on the couch. On the nights she stayed over she never mentioned curfew, or having to call her parents. Peter had long suspected that MJ's home life was, at the very least, complicated. Sheltering-in-place was all well and good as long as the shelter provided more safety than the outside world. MJ didn't talk about leaving behind parents or siblings. She wasn't hiding bruises under her shirt but...no one called, no one checked in on her, no one seemed to care that she was out of the house all day during a global pandemic. And maybe that implied a lack of safety, too.</p><p>Five days after Aunt May was put on a ventilator, two days after MJ unofficially moved in, Peter still felt like throwing things. Or breaking things. He woke up to socks being thrown at his face.</p><p>"It's six am!" he sputtered at MJ. She threw his shoes next.</p><p>"Only decent time to run."</p><p>Peter didn't like running in gym class. He didn't like when Captain America or Hawkeye started their training sessions with a five-mile "warm-up." He hated the cramps and the monotony.</p><p>He ran with MJ anyway, and they ran again at dusk.</p><p>He fell asleep at ten pm instead of three am.</p><p>He woke up to socks in the face again.</p><p>They didn't talk much. They ran twice a day, and sat across from each other on the couch seeing who could do Calc problem sets the fastest. They listened to podcasts and ate bread. MJ taught him how to crochet. They began to run a little earlier in the evening, to get in eight miles before sun down. MJ knew Flash's HBO password and they started watching <i>Game of Thrones</i>. They had just gotten to King's Landing when Mr. Stark called.</p><p>Peter stared at the phone, adrenaline like pennies on his tongue. He shook his head at MJ. "I can't. I can't answer it."</p><p>"Even I don't hate Iron Man that much."</p><p>But Peter just shook his head as the phone buzzed again. He knew what this call was. The hospital had called Tony, who was listed as Peter's legal guardian if Aunt May...if she didn't...</p><p>The phone flashed. Peter thought of Schrodinger, and how if you never opened the box then the cat never died. He thought about the towers falling over and over and over again, a cut flower kind of fall.</p><p>"Peter Parker's phone," a girl said, distantly. "MJ speaking."</p><p>"Woah, Pete, you get one piece of good news and you get all the girls over." Tony's voice - loud, brash, jovial. Warm. Alive.</p><p>Peter grabbed the phone. "Good - you have good news?"</p><p>"Don't tell me the hospital called me before you! Broken systems everywhere, kid. This is why I haven't been in New York much. Fighting against outdated technology, that's my motto."</p><p>Peter felt his shoulders relax. He hadn't known until now that every muscle in his body had been tense, had been prepared to flee for days now. "Good news?"</p><p>"Your Aunt's off the ventilator, and apparently turned a corner. I honestly don't understand the numbers they were throwing around but JARVIS relayed them to Bruce and he says that everything is pointing towards recovery. You'll be getting a phone call from him at, like, midnight Bangladesh time so he can go over everything with you. He thought you might be comforted by data."</p><p>"Bruce Banner is calling you!" MJ shrieked in Peter's ear.</p><p>"I love how geeky you all are." Mr. Stark sounded surprisingly sincere. "Atlanta is a shitshow, kid, so I can't talk long. I just wanted to say."</p><p>The pause went on so long Peter checked his phone screen to make sure they hadn't been disconnected.</p><p>"I just wanted to say I'm happy your Aunt is getting healthy, but if things had gone South I would have been there in a heartbeat. And I'll stay your secondary guardian or whatever it is. Legally. Informally. However you need me. If you need me."</p><p>MJ's eyes were wide. "Holy shit," she mouthed.</p><p>Peter blinked at the phone.</p><p>"Kid. Peter? Are you there? Shit, I don't think I'll be able to get through that again. JARVIS, redial -"</p><p>"No, Mr. Stark, I'm here. I'm..." Peter swallowed. "No one's ever done as much for me as you have. You and Aunt May. I think that makes us sort of family."</p><p>"Well..." Peter could practically feel Tony's confused, awkward happiness from fifteen hundred miles away. "Well, I mean, sure. Okay. Hey! One of my New York guys saw Fred's app and showed it to me, and I got to give a very weird explanation for why I know a sixteen year old."</p><p>"And why you refuse to call him by his name." Peter knew Tony was changing the subject and let him. He felt weightless and breathless and alive, like the final half mile of the run when he started getting closer to home.</p><p>"Anyway, this guy told me a nasty rumor that Oscorp has been sniffing around Ted for weeks."</p><p>MJ rolled her eyes and Peter stifled a laugh. "There might have been an interview. Why? You want him for Stark Industries?"</p><p>"No! I recently inherited enough pain in the ass teenagers. I just don't want Oscorp to get anyone that good, either. Did I tell you about Stark Home? I'm going to revolutionize appliances. I think that would be a good place to start Nelson."</p><p>"Well, you know, with a pandemic on obviously you need all your best computer guys working on toasters."</p><p>"Hey, that kitchen stuff has been very profitable. Even anti-vaxxers need to eat."</p><p>Peter happily bantered with Tony about the anti-vax movement and the troubles at the CDC and how exactly working with the current administration was going ("You know, I never ran in the same circles as Trump - he had a couple decades on me, thank god - but we were in the same scene. He was a New York party guy. How the actual fuck did we get here?") Peter only hung up when he got a call, finally, late, from the hospital.</p><p>He couldn't see his aunt. He couldn't even talk to his aunt. She was weak and sleeping. But she was off the ventilator and the nurses liked him, liked his baking and his manners, and promised they'd have someone staying with May all night. She was a nurse too. They were taking care of their own.</p><p>The nurse Peter talked to (doctors were apparently in too short a supply to do things like talk to a patient's family) was nearly in tears when she described taking May off the ventilator. "They usually don't end like this, honey. Someone out there is looking out for your aunt, that's a sure thing. What we had here today was a miracle."</p><p>"I believe it," Peter said. And why not? Thor the Thunder God had a suite in an apartment uptown. Iron Man was his benefactor. His Aunt was the last important person left in his life and she was okay. Despite the virus and the economic collapse and the shifting plates of the country, Peter called the shots like he saw them. Today was a miracle.</p><p>.</p><p>Peter didn't see Tony again until the end of June, at the funeral.</p><p>New York was in the throes of the Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent protests and for the first time in weeks Peter was out on the streets as Spider-Man, trying to put his spandex body between cops and protesters, de-escalating tensions and trying to lift up voices. He didn't always get things right - he was sixteen - and there was some backlash on Twitter when he tried to get people stop looting one of his favorite bodegas. He didn't mind the looting when it was at Saks or Macys but something about seeing Delmar's being raided made his blood boil. He was accused of caring more about the looting than the protests and felt annoyed by that, and then annoyed at his own annoyance. He felt like the work he was doing with the protesters and the police wasn't being seen.</p><p>He mentioned this to MJ. They'd been having some interesting conversations about the protests. Aunt May wasn't in the hospital anymore and was recovering at home, and their apartment was small but somehow MJ just...stayed. On the couch, where she was blogging and vlogging and live streaming their experiences in the protests, and where Aunt May frequently had to break up arguments with a tiny bell, like you find at a hotel, that she dinged to signal the volume needed to come down.</p><p>Anyway, he brought up Spider-Man's spotty reputation to MJ in the middle of one of those...enthusiastic conversations, and MJ asked why he felt like he needed to be seen, and Peter said that he knew that super heroes rarely got credit and he often got a ton of negativity for his Spider-Man work even though he felt like he was a net good, and he felt like everyone saw when he screwed up and piled on for weeks (led by the Daily Bugle) and no one saw when he did anything good, like he could literally save someone's life or change someone's life or prevent a huge accident and no one even said "good job," hardly.</p><p>And MJ said, well, that's sort of how people of color feel. Not to speak for all people of color. But, well, that's how I feel. Like, black people are only on the news when they're shooting someone. Or making a touchdown pass. What about black lawyers, judges, doctors? What about decent black people?</p><p>And Peter said, sure, okay, but that's a system problem with a group of people and I'm just one super-recognizable Spider-Man.</p><p>And MJ said, you don't have to go out as Spider-Man. You can just go to the protest as Peter.</p><p>And Peter thought about it. "Actually," his voice was quieter now. Aunt May had her finger poised over the bell but Peter didn't need it to ding right now. "I think I might do more good as Spider-Man. I think I can help more people not get hurt in, like, police confrontations if I can move around crowds as Spider-Man."</p><p>"Even if they don't appreciate you?" MJ said, kind of to be snide, and kind of like she was genuinely curious.</p><p>"Even then."</p><p>So they were at a protest and it was June and the streets were filled with people and Peter hadn't been elbow to elbow in a crowd like this since March, at least, and everyone feels warm and righteous and stir-crazy and passionate and that's when Karen gets a call that the virus has killed someone else.</p><p>Ned had been absent from the protests. He said he didn't have the physique for it, but that wasn't the reason. His mother went into the hospital around the same time as Aunt May.</p><p>And she didn't come back out.</p><p>Peter and MJ had been to Ned's building several times, sitting on his fire escape and talking to him and his brother through the window. In Ned's family it was him, his mom, and his brother Cal, nineteen and back from Stanford for the duration of the pandemic. It was Cal who got into contact with some of his Stanford friends and their fathers to get Ned's app expanded outside of the tri-state area. Cal couldn't code like Ned but he was majoring in web design. Before their mom got sick, Cal and Ned were becoming something of a brothers dream team. Ned had gotten one interview with Oscorp. Cal fended off calls from every company, every day. In the middle of the worst unemployment crisis in living memory.</p><p>Anyway, the Leeds had a little three-person bubble, and their mother was a formidable five foot force, but the drive to do good wasn't just in the younger generation, and while Mrs. Leeds didn't feel the need to log her good deeds on an app, she was still out there delivering groceries. Nursing the sick. They lived in an apartment building that had become, through the years, heavily South-Asian, particularly South-Asians without legal status.</p><p>Mrs. Leeds had become a pillar in the undocumented community. Lacking insurance, many of those getting sick didn't want to set foot in the hospital. That's where Mrs. Leeds came in. Hot showers, clean surfaces, home remedies of broth and chicken stock. Masks on. But. Things happened. When she first got sick, Mrs. Leeds (also undocumented, also without insurance) also tried to tough it out at home. Cal took over the cleaning. Mrs. Leeds got sicker. Cal tried to send Ned away, but to where? To Peter, whose aunt was also in the hospital? To their relatives, across a now-impassable ocean? And their mother only sicker, weaker, coughing, unable to catch her breath, unable to walk across the room, cold all the time, then too hot, not able to sleep because she couldn't breathe. Cal trying to help her without getting sick himself, without getting his little brother sick. The world outside moving on. It was the beginning of June. The virus, according to the news, had left the city.</p><p>Now two weeks later Peter sat with a shell-shocked Ned. The funeral was tiny. Only ten people allowed in the building at once, everyone in masks, flowers refused at the door. Cal stood outside, walking through a socially-distant crowd, trying to redistribute all the food people had brought without seeming impolite. The boys could eat for months if everything was properly frozen.</p><p>Peter was trying to be there for Ned but his only question was entirely selfish. He'd known Ned since they were nerdy first graders playing <i>Harry Potter</i> make-believe on the playground. "Where are you going to live?" Peter asked, since it was practical, and all the other things he had to say were too big to answer.</p><p>Ned shrugged. "No one...I mean, it's not like DYFS is knocking at the door. I don't think anyone has noticed us yet, to be honest. Cal already said he'll stay in New York until I graduate. Stanford will probably be online for the fall anyway. But will he be allowed to take care of me? He just turned nineteen."</p><p>MJ, sitting on the other side of Ned (they weren't socially distanced, they'd become part of each other's quarantine bubbles so they could hug each other these long and lonely weeks) suggested emancipation, if nothing else worked out.</p><p>"Don't you have to be self-sufficient for that?" Ned wondered. "I thought it was for, like, child actors? We have no money. We had no money before Mom...and now. She was in the hospital at the end. This is the cheapest funeral option. Cal looked at the bank account. He said that he wanted to drink, just looking at all the red, but neither of us are old enough for that. Not old enough to drink but old enough for...debt. And...and homelessness...and..." Ned was getting more worked up, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. "And maybe I'll have to go somewhere. And it's just so...so unfair." The words choked now. Ned was a sixteen year old boy. They hate to cry. He was crying now. "Mom just wanted to take care of people."</p><p>Cal let in another stream of people. An older couple dressed all in black. A man, in black. In sunglasses. Mask on. He stopped in front of the teenagers. "Well, this isn't exactly the homecoming I was imagining."</p><p>Peter scrambled to his feet and barely stopped from throwing himself into Mr. Stark's arms. His heart beat wildly in his throat. All he could think was: Iron Man is here. He can fix it.</p><p>"Come on, kid," Mr. Stark, gruff as ever, pulled Peter into his arms. </p><p>MJ gave Peter a thumbs up from over Mr. Stark's shoulder. "Should you be doing that, sir? I mean, isn't having no heart the definition of immuno-compromised?"</p><p>"Teenagers think they've got the market cornered on breaking the rules." Mr. Stark pulled away from Peter. "Hello, children. Hello, Ned." This last sentence...gentle in a way Peter never associated with his mentor. And, of course, he'd gotten the name right. "My parents died when I was just your age. There's nothing anyone can say to make it better. It is the worst thing that can happen to someone, and I'm so, so sorry we weren't able to get a handle on this virus in time to save your mother."</p><p>Ned swallowed, blinked. His face was still streaked with tears. "It's not your fault, sir. I know that all the Avengers are doing what they can."</p><p>"Oh, sure. Wakanda's on top of vaccine production, me and Mr. Fantastic --" eye roll, Mr. Stark hated Reed Richards, "are trying to get the CDC in shape, and Dr. Banner and Strange are in the far East doing the same with the docs over there, trying to stop it from decimating the developing world. What's left of SHIELD is playing the shady spy game, and of course you've seen the good Captain on tv." Captain America had gone back to his old Hollywood angle, except instead of asking people to buy war bonds he was encouraging everyone to wear masks and social distance and seriously trying to promote the efficacy of vaccines. "But, yeah, it's hard not to feel useless when we've got arsenals of weapons and this thing is too small to blast to smithereens."</p><p>"Maybe Ant Man should give the blasting thing a try." Peter suggested.</p><p>"I spend half my day fighting with Pym's people. I did not come here to be sassed by teenagers."</p><p>Peter tried to hide a grin. They were at a funeral. </p><p>Ned piped up, curious for the first time in days. "It's, you know, nice to see you Mr. Stark. But if you're so busy why did you come here?"</p><p>"I want to solve a problem, and this is one I know how to solve. You need an adult in your life, and Peter's poor Aunt May can't take care of all you misfits on her own. So I made some executive decisions. There will be a trust involved, and some lawyers, and some money."</p><p>MJ went outside and grabbed Cal. Pulled him in for the rest of Mr. Stark's speech.</p><p>"It should last you and your brother through four years of college. If either of you want more education, we can talk about it when the time comes, but I always think work is the best educator. Move fast and break things. The trust will cover rent in your current apartment and comes with a monthly allowance."</p><p>Ned's jaw was on the floor. It was Cal who spoke. Cal, who had always been an older brother to Peter, who bought him a Christmas present every year. Cal who was tall and thin, who had a mop of black hair, several tufts of which (behind the ears, by the neck) had turned a shocking gray these last few weeks. Cal with a proud chin and a straight back, who worked for everything he had. "What do you want in return?"</p><p>Cal would have done a lot of things for his brother. He would have worked for the money. Would have begged for the money. Would have dropped out of school and given up his dreams in order to support Ned through these last tumultuous years of teenagehood. Whatever this older man, this mysterious benefactor, this stranger wanted from a poor, beautiful, dark-skinned boy, Cal probably would have found a way to give it.</p><p>Tony Stark took out his glasses to stare at this trio of orphaned teenaged boys. "When the time comes to get a job, come to me before you go to Norman Osborn."</p><p>Cal, tense all over, waited for more. "That's it?"</p><p>"It's the best I can do. I have to be back in Atlanta in two hours. A lawyer will call you tomorrow." Tony's gaze slid back to Peter. "I've been seeing Spider-Man on the news. You sure you want to take on the NYPD?"</p><p>"I don't want --- I mean ---" Peter glanced at Cal, who still seemed dumb-struck by his good luck on the worst day of his life. "I don't think Spider-Man wants to take on the NYPD. But someone has to hold them accountable!"</p><p>"It's not really the super hero scene, kiddo."</p><p>Peter wilted. "So I need to stay out of protests?"</p><p>"I didn't say that. Times they are a-changing. Go where you're needed. Move fast. Break things." Several devices on Mr. Stark's person started beeping. "I really do need to go. Say hello to your hot aunt for me. Boys, I am truly sorry for your loss. I'm trying to make sure this doesn't keep happening."</p><p>MJ, who used to protest outside of SI, who used to write scathing articles about their oversees factories, about sweatshops and overmining. MJ patted Tony Stark on the arm. "Thanks for helping," she said.</p><p>"Thank you," Ned echoed, voice strangled.</p><p>"It was nice to see you," Peter said, grinning like a maniac.</p><p>Cal opened his mouth, probably to say thank you, too. But then he looked at Peter. And at Mr. Stark. And at Ned and MJ. And back at Peter. "Wait. What? Are you...Peter, are you fucking Spider-Man?"</p><p>"Gotta go." Mr. Stark strode out the door and into the New York sunshine. </p><p>It was high summer. Every night people took to the streets. A super-hero couldn't stop his best friend's life from falling apart. Schools were closed. Borders were closed. </p><p>Tony Stark headed South. The towers were still falling.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I knew I wanted to update this story when Disney World re-opened. Chapter 3 will be posted when we get Broadway back. Stay safe, social distance, and be kind to each other. The world is tough right now.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. December-January</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Peter thinks New Year's Eve is going to be another predictable night, but a routine robbery gets in the way.</p>
<p>Also featured: vaccines, Johnny Storm, and a stabbing.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>"What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven't even happened yet."<br/><b><i>-Anne Frank</i></b><br/>.***.</p>
</div>It was mid-December, nine months since New York had changed forever. Peter felt the hard line separation in his life acutely, remembering it from the days when he first became Spider-Man. How at first this new power had brought fear, confusion, anxiety, how it seemed to overwhelm all over parts of his life - his relationships, schoolwork, his plans for the future, swallowed in a spider's bite. And then, eventually, so gradually he couldn't possibly pinpoint the day or the hour, how Spider-Man became just another part of him. He was going to school, and he was Spider-Man. He was scrolling through Twitter, and he was Spider-Man. Another part of his life, rather than the only part of his life.<p>If he had to guess what living through a pandemic would be like, he would never have guessed this: how at first it was everything, waking up in the early hours of the morning and remembering the world was fundamentally altered, trying to do research, failing at research, worrying, worrying, feeling like nothing would ever be normal, ever.</p>
<p>And then, like Spider-Man became one part of his life, the pandemic, somehow, became one part of his life.</p>
<p>Nine months was awfully long for a teenager, and other things had to fit in around the virus. He went to school (from his home and, for several glorious weeks in October, in person, masked, making jokes in the hallway). He fell in love. He became very, very good at <i>Among Us.<i></i></i></p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>That heavy, doomed feeling from the spring never fully left, like his realization of responsibility about his powers never left, like his grief over Uncle Ben's death still occupied a sizable corner of his mind. But it was no longer The Only Thing. Peter went for long runs around the city. In November, he and the Avengers had diffused protests and confusion around the election by dancing in the streets with the "Count Every Vote" parties. He started patrolling with regularity when school restarted in the fall. Midtown hosted a virtual Academic Decathlon competition, which was glitchy and amazing.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>And in mid-December, a truck rumbled through a tunnel, bound for one of the biggest hospitals in the city.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Spider-Man was there to greet the truck, uninvited but welcomed by the camera crews and passerby, who waved at him on his perch on the facade of the hospital. On ground level, Tony Stark and Reed Richards, the two most prominent heroes in the city and some of the most famous scientists in the world, waved to the driver and climbed in the back to inspect the contents. They weren't wearing their super personas. They didn't need to. Their job today was to be the (more human) face of science.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>In Washington, D.C., Captain America and Falcon were greeting similar cargos. In Atlanta, the heroes were Black Widow, Thor, and Dr. Anthony Faucci.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Vaccines had arrived in America.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter felt strangely emotional and was glad for the impassivity of the mask. Tony and Reed supervised the unloading of the boxes, checking that they were at the right temperature (ridiculously cold) and answering questions for the waiting reporters.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"How can people know it's safe?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Will you be taking the vaccine yourselves?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"How long will we have to wear masks?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A figure dropped down onto the sloped roof beside Peter. "Hey, kiddo. Haven't seen you out of Queens much this year."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter grinned and (completely forgetting about social distancing) launched himself at Johnny Storm. Other than the strange kids from the School for Gifted Youngsters, who passed through periodically, they were the youngest heroes in the city, and on the two most well-established teams. Up until the virus, he had been seeing Johnny regularly enough to be teased by both Tony and Ned about having a crush. And then this year? Johnny had followed his sister and Reed to Atlanta to be at the heart of the action at the CDC, and other than quick texts asking how Peter was doing "holding the fort" communication had whittled to practically nothing.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Look who's talking!" Peter punched Johnny in the shoulder (carefully. The Human Torch had remarkable healing abilities but even among the heroes there were few who were quite as strong as Spider-Man.) "I could have used you this summer, man."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You did great with the protests. Honestly, kid, I would have gotten in your way."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"The city likes you," Peter complained. "They hate me."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Johnny rolled his eyes and gestured at the loose crowd below. Everyone was wearing masks. About half of those masks had super hero branding. And about half of the super heroes were Spider-Man.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You did a ton of growing up this year, Petey -" only Johnny called him Petey, and only because he knew how much he hated the nickname - "We're all pretty proud of you."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Who is 'we'?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Your name came up in Atlanta when we were trying to coordinate the vaccine rollout. And not just from Tony - who thinks the sun shines out of your ass, by the way -"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"He does not!"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"But Hawkeye, T'Challa, even the old folks like the Professor and the Captain. They think a lot of you. And, you know, I think New York thinks a lot of you, too."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Tell that to the Daily Bugle."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Johnny waved that aside. "The Daily Bugle is going the way of Fox News. It's not what matters. You know that the city loves you because they give you so much shit. And Peter, you've never been outside of New York. You meet a New Yorker in Atlanta? And god forbid some poor Atlanta SOB starts talking shit about you? That New Yorker starts throwing hands, I guarantee it."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"So New York can be mean to me but no one else can." That had never occurred to Peter before. Then he looked up at Johnny, suddenly indignant. "And I have too been out of New York. I've been to Germany, and D.C., and my aunt and I went to Canada once."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Johnny laughed and slapped him on the back. "You're like everyone's little brother, kid. We give you hell. But we're the only ones allowed to do it."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Some raised voices made them both look down to the trucks below. Ben O'Malley, who used to be a freelancer for the Bugle until breaking out with their podcast "The Pulse," an hour a week of anti-superhero and pro-conspiracy trash, a shock of red hair and a ruddy complexion, mask hanging down below his nose, shouting his way beyond the press gang. "Haven't you ever seen a movie?" Ben asked, loudly, dramatically, obviously recording for his podcast. "Don't you know this is how the zombies happen?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Reed was fielding questions with the patience of a man used to working long hours next to Tony Stark. "Vaccines are some of the most rigorously tested drugs medicine produces. They are perfectly safe."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"But you have no proof! You have no clue what this vaccine can do to you in a year - or five years!"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I do know what it can do," Reed countered. "It can provide you with anti-bodies that means that you will, hopefully, never have to suffer the affects of this terrible disease."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Sure you get anti-bodies, but what else do you get?" Ben pressed. "Autism? Cancer? Zombie disease? Just admit that you don't know everything that can possibly happen."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I am following the science. This is the science that has eradicated small pox. The science that is years away from obliterating polio. I stake my reputation on it: this is safe. This is effective. This is a way out of this pandemic and into a safer tomorrow."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Ben O'Malley drew himself up to his full height, and Peter could never prove this but he was pretty sure that Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, stretched himself, just a little, so he was still taller. "I have no clue what is in that vaccine. I'll take my chances with the virus."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter webbed the side of the building, preparing to swing down. Johnny grabbed his arm.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Let go! I'll take that vaccine right now."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You can't. None of us can. Cap tried. Dr. Banner tried. Anyone with changed DNA has had some pretty gross reactions. Thor blew up like a balloon."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter re-webbed the building. "Then I'll just punch Ben in his stupid -"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Johnny laughed, holding tight to Peter's hand. "On the bright side, we also can't get the virus."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He's suspected that since March. He couldn't get a cold, or flu, and Dr. Banner speculated that though those changed through radiation, like himself and the Fantastic Four, might have a higher chance of cancer, that Peter would probably live an abnormally healthy life as long as he didn't get crushed by a rogue inter-planet attack. To hear the confirmation out loud, though - to know that all his worrying in the spring, when Aunt May was so sick, when Ned's mother was so sick, when everyone was sick and dying - that all that was for nothing, about nothing...</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Are you sure?" he said, and it came out like a croak.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Johnny looked suddenly sad. "I thought Tony told you. We knew that...ages ago. July. August. Ages now. We just wear masks for appearances." Johnny sighed. "Never mind that now. This isn't our battle. It's for the real humans to sort out."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>As Ben O'Malley continued raging at Reed Richards, Tony, who had been supervising the truck unloading, grabbed a vial, stormed past Reed, made sure every camera was on him, and plunged the needle into his own arm.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The crowd was quiet enough to hear a reporter from the New York Times say into his microphone (he probably had a podcast, too.) "Tony Stark just gave himself the vaccine. What a badass. I mean. Also. Don't try this at home."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"It's like a pinch. A pinch today. A pinch three weeks from now. And we are on our way out of this pandemic. Three hundred thousand Americans dead. One and a half million people in the world, dead. Do you remember the Battle of New York?" Tony was addressing Ben O'Malley but he was also sort of talking to everyone. "Because I sure as hell do. Over six thousand people dead in one day. 9/11? Three thousand people. We are surpassing that. Daily. You want to not die? Take the goddamn shot."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Ben's red face got redder. "What happened to 'my body, my choice?'"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"This is not about you. Do something for someone else for once. Stop lying to people. Your job - everyone's job for the next few months - is to stay inside, get their shots, and stop scaring each other."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Hear hear," Peter called. Every head looked up at him. A little kid in the crowd waved.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Now, if we're done with the theatrics," Tony said, which was a little rich since he was basically ground zero for drama. "We've got some real heroes who really, really want this vaccine."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>In short order: chairs, gowns, vials. A line of doctors. A nurse at the front. She blew Tony a kiss, and he pretended to hold it to his heart. She sat down, and got vaccinated in the middle of the street in New York City on live television.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Then Aunt May stood and gave Peter a thumbs up. When she smiled she looked like an angel.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Christmas had blown by them with little fanfare. Usually even secular Peter and MJ would get into the holiday spirit of downtown, of shows and lights, of parties and displays, and build-up of end-of-year exams and the relief of home and evergreen scents waiting as Christmas approached.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>This year, of course, every part of that had the distinct, biting flavor of the virus. Rockefeller Center sported the Christmas tree and ice skating, as well as barriers limiting the number of people who could crush together to see it. Even the teenagers who would throw the parties listlessly group chatted across the school's various platforms with vague promises of next year. Peter, MJ, and Ned, who had finally made their own quarantine bubble, decorated cookies and listened to carols and put up the tree, but the motions, more than anything else that year, felt like a performance, a way of convincing each other that they were fine, fine, all fine.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>And so Christmas day went by in the delicate, quiet way most days of the year had crept forward. The same people in the same rooms, a television on the background. A new winter jacket for Peter, a new laptop for MJ, a food subscription box for Ned and Cal. Aunt May, the adult presiding over the event, had Christmas Day off. They ate rotisserie chicken with lots of veggies and watched movies featuring families, snow, uncomplicated plots.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Last year Tony had thrown a gala to try to repair the relations between the different super heroes who called New York home, and Peter had spent the majority of the evening not looking at Johnny Storm in a suit and debating with Foggy Nelson about the relative merits of a graduate education.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter tried not to pine. He texted Tony a picture of them all gathered around the Christmas tree, ugly sweaters in full display.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>At the end of the evening, MJ was curled up next to Peter, playing soduku on her new high-end laptop. "You know," she said, "I think for the first time I'm really, really looking forward to New Year."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Cal and Ned had decided to spend the night. A storm raged outside, the gales bracing the windows. Cal looked up, thoughtful. "I can't stand the thought of New Year."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"It means we're really moving forward," Ned murmured. "And Mom's not."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Aunt May rested a hand on the back of Ned's neck. They let the room fill with the ghosts of the year. Hundreds and thousands of them.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>In the lead up to New Year's Eve, Spider-Man was called to various places around the city to do some positive vaccine promotion. He stood next to the governor and the mayor as they and their families were inoculated. He shook hands with infectious disease doctors, with ICU nurses, with pediatric oncologists. "Thank you for your service," Spider-Man said to one Hispanic radiologist.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The doctor shook his head, and whether he was contemplative or happy was mostly hidden behind his mask. "I'd usually be telling you that, man."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>There was a small commotion near the entrance and Spider-Man excused himself. Sometimes just inserting his colorful body in a situation diffused it. Or else he'd get punched. But. You know. Better him than someone else.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"We need to expose this place," a loud, unmasked twenty-something white guy shouted. He was holding a phone in the face of the registering nurse. "People need to know what's going on here."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Spider-Man showed up at the same time as several other burly, guard-type people. "I have to ask you to leave," one of the nurses said.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Do you even know what's in these things? Mercury! Formaldehyde! Aluminum! They are making you barren. They are - oh, and they've even got government crony Spider-Man in on the action. Say hi, Spider-Man! Do you get some kind of bonus for poisoning all these people?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I think we should step aside," Spider-Man suggested. "You're holding up the line."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I don't think I will step aside. Do these people even know the science? Did they give informed consent?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Someone put their hand on Spider-Man's shoulder. It happened rarely enough these days that Peter flinched a little. The hand belonged to a heavy-set nurse with pink unicorn scrubs. "I have personally held the hands of twenty-nine people who have died of this virus." She spoke calmly into the camera that was stuck in her face. "Before this year, I was a pediatric nurse. Now I work mostly in the ICU. I have been a nurse for thirty-three years. I know the science." She blinked at the man with his pamphlets. "Put on your damn mask."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Spider-Man had to restrain the urge to applaud. He grabbed the elbow of the anti-vax guy and hustled him out of line.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"They think I'm the enemy but I'm not," the man said. "Who even knows what's in these vaccines? My cousin got autism from a one. You know, the kind you get when you're a baby, and we've had those baby ones for years. What are you going to get from new ones? It can do something to a lady's eggs, man. It can turn you gay."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter rolled his eyes. He had to restrain himself from webbing this guy to a rooftop, leaving him to shout to no one.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"If you're not going to let me go back there, at least give them this." The man shoved a roll of pamphlets into Peter's hands. "Just leave them on the table. If the the government is going to make people get vaccinated, they should at least be informed that there's ways to detox. Cilantro and lavender. Enough of that and the vaccine goes away."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Spider-Man dumped most of the brochures in a trash can on the way back to the clinic, but he kept a few for himself. MJ was going to love this.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>New Year's Eve was like a bubble no one wanted to burst, like a mirage in danger of fading if you looked at it too closely.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I keep thinking that tomorrow it will all be over," MJ said as they laced up for their last morning run of 2020.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The winter darkness - and Aunt May's insistence that they only run after dawn - allowed them to sleep in, and Peter wondered if there would be a point, in the distant future, where he ever missed the stasis of these days, the sameness, all the people he loved in easy reach. But he had only to look at Ned to remember that he was one of the luckiest ones, and the year had brought far, far more harm than good.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"That's better than what I keep thinking." Peter began moving through some easy stretches. "Which is that I'll wake up tomorrow and it will be January 1st 2020, and I'll have to do the whole year over again."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Groundhog's Day style."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"It just..." Peter shrugged. "I'm happy we made it. But this was hard. And I don't think I could do it again."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"If you had to, you would," MJ said a surety Peter envied. "But we're moving forward. May got the vaccine. You're officially immune. Ned and Cal are riddled with anti-bodies. Maybe we can...stop worrying as much. That's my New Year's wish."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You don't get a wish, you get a resolution."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Then I resolve to stop worrying."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter looked up at the sky. Slate gray. They'd already had some snow, and there'd be more snow to come, a long spool of January days. He would patrol tonight, and every night for the next month. Violent crime was on the rise. Murders were on the rise. The city was simmering and, with no clear enemy to attack, had turned inward. Like a virus. Killing its host.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I resolve..." Peter let the words sit on the tip of his tongue. "To worry about the important things. I think the virus has made us all look at the world microscopically. Our vision just..." Peter waved his hands. "Shrunk. Our worlds shrunk. I want to think bigger again."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>MJ blinked at him. She had a yellow hat crammed on her head. She'd knit all their winter things herself. Spider-Man patrolled and MJ stayed home and listened to podcasts and worried at waited. The yellow hat had a gray pompom at the end, and it bobbed as MJ stood on tip-toes to kiss him.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>They ran together through the streets of New York, and yelled happy new year through their masks, and other people yelled happy new year through their own masks, and Peter and MJ became a part of the beating heart of the city's ecosystem, a city teetering on the verge of hope as it edged towards the year's end.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter had wanted to kiss MJ at midnight. It would have been his first time ringing in the New Year with someone to kiss, and he knew the superstition was to start the New Year off in the way you planned to end it, and he definitely planned to spend the year with MJ's lips on his.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He did not want to spend a year getting pounded by an unexpectedly prepared gang of armed robbers.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Spider-Man managed to jerk his head to the side, avoiding another punch to the face. He kicked the masked man who was pinning his legs. Then someone kicked him in the ribs.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Two fractured ribs," Karen reported. "Should I send a distress signal?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>That would only worry Tony, who Peter would see for a New Year's Day brunch in, oh, about ten hours, and who he definitely didn't want to come and worry over a couple of measly ribs. He'd heal! He'd be fine by brunch. He just needed to -</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Another punch landed square in his face. There were at least six men and they'd wrestled him to the ground. Usually robbers wanted to get away with the goods, but these ones seemed to take great pleasure in hanging around and whaling on him.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He was out of practice. Used to be patrolling was supplemented by training with Cap and Hawkeye at the facility upstate, talking over tactics with the Fantastic Four over dinners at their tower, dropping in on the School and auditing classes with Cyclops and Kitty. The community he'd had was completely fractured as the heroes were either involved in the vaccine effort or trying to stop crime in their own territories.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He'd have to ask Tony about maybe starting up some training again, and maybe -</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A knife plunged into his chest.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter had stopped thinking about dying on patrol. It had become so routine; robberies, gang fights, domestic abuse. A few punches, a few one-liners, web 'em up for the cops to find.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>All the breath was gone from his body. Karen said something but the blood was pounding in his ears. He jerked his hands free and scrambled to his feet, bending over. He resisted the urge to pull the knife out. It would be worse if he did.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He webbed around the knife and then scrambled up the wall behind him, barely evading a bullet.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Aw, looks like little Spider-Boy is trying to leave the party."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You two take the stuff. We'll meet you back at the place once we take care of him."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter pulled himself onto a fire escape, shaking with the effort, his breath coming out in huge misty puffs.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Just leave him, Rod. We got what we wanted."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Nah, it's time to take our hood back from this Spider-Boy."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The ladder of the fire escape clattered down. Peter wasn't safe here, but he couldn't move. Karen kept urging him to get up, but he was too cold, and moving would make it worse, he knew it would.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Boots on the ladder. Peter tried to climb up the wall but something was wrong, he couldn't hold on, he kept falling. He thought of Aunt May on a ventilator, of MJ on the roof, of Cal and Ned at their mother's funeral. Is this how this year would end? After everything? Spider-Man gone at the point of a goon's gun?</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He blinked in the cold. He tried to slow his breath, tried to stop crying, tried to remember everything he'd ever learned.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He listened.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Boots. Clattering. The click of a safety.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He let himself sink into the sensations of his Spidey-Sense, and fired two shots of web.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>At the same time, sirens blared around the corner. It wasn't Tony Stark. It was the good ol' fashioned cavalry in the form of the NYPD. They were patrolling thick on New Year's Eve. They were masked up and guns blazing.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter let his head fall to the surface of the fire escape and he felt numb and distant as he listened to the cops round up the gang, listened to a few cops peel off to catch some runners, listened to another pair of boots climbing up onto the fire escape.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"We got another one! Don't move - oh -" the cop, who had been shouting, holstered their weapon and knelt next to Spider-Man. "Didn't know you were involved in this one, Spidey. Didn't see any web down there."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter tried to raise his hand, wave the cop off. He and the NYPD had reached a sort of truce since the protests of the summer. Peter webbed up baddies or dropped criminals at the door of police stations, the force showed up to add muscle to bigger busts. But they didn't help each other, exactly, and the administration in the force was always quick to name Spider-Man a nuisance or a menace in their briefings.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A hand put pressure on his belly. Spider-Man winced, tried to cringe away. "Looks like a bad one. Do you want me to pull it out? Do you...I know some of the heroes heal. Sorry, I'm not real big on memorizing powers and things, you should see my wife, though, she knows everything about the Avengers. Are you an Avenger?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter pushed the hands away. His swat was as light as a bird.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I could call for an ambulance, they'd be here stat. Only...my Captain, he's not too happy with some of the heroes. I mean he'd definitely let you get medical attention. I think. But. He might also try to arrest you."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter shook his head. He imagined limping back to the apartment, where MJ was probably waiting for him, as she did every night after patrol. She said they'd watch the ball drop together. They'd catch it on YouTube and pretend it was midnight. He wanted that night so badly that the thought of being dragged down to the hospital made his skin crawl.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You look real bad off, my friend. Can you - can I see your face? It's just hard to get a pulse. No? Are you one of the secret identity ones? I'm so sorry, man, I know nothing about the heroes."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Still, the officer wouldn't leave. Someone called up to him, asking if the fire escape was clear. The officer made up a story about detailing evidence. He turned back to Peter. "I can't just leave you like this. You shouldn't be alone. That knife..."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Just as the officer was leaning over the fire escape, about to tell his partner or maybe his captain about the stray super hero he'd found, a comet streaked down from the sky.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter turned in the direction of the Human Torch, blinking back tears of relief.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Maybe his community wasn't so far away after all.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Johnny took one look at Peter and started swearing, picking Peter up - he wanted to curl against the other teen's chest, wanted the flames to finally get rid of all this cold.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>His eyes were still closed, but he could hear the officer stutter, "Uh, okay. Is he with you? I mean, do you got him?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>From the ground, other shouts, asking the officer what was going on up there.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"I got him," Johnny confirmed, keeping one hand on the knife in Peter's chest. "Thank you for your help."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter turned his face to the officer and croaked out: "Happy New Year."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>January 1st. A brand new year.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The vaccine roll out was spluttery, plagued by inadequate holiday staffing and a resolute resistance to centralization in the federal government. Tony, Reed Richards, and Dr. Banner were spearheading a third vaccine due to be approved any day now. Closer to home, Cal deferred a semester of his sophomore year at Stanford, opting instead to try to scale his and Ned's delivery app up while also working with some of the city officials on making an app to try to keep track of the vaccine roll out. Ned spend most evenings coding on Peter's couch, watching all the new Star Wars content. MJ made elaborate crochet projects and wrote scathing articles about the continued resistance to a peaceful transfer of power.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>And Spider-Man was trying not to die in in the penthouse of the Baxter Building. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"You know what we need? A healer." Johnny was opening gauze and packing it into the wound, tearing open new packs with his teeth. He worked with precision and speed and sweat dripped down his brow. He'd seen Ben do this job a hundred times, but Johnny was rarely the ones cleaning wounds at the end of a fight. "Like, not just someone who can heal themselves but someone whose powers let them heal other people."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter was barely awake. He was still mostly in costume, though Johnny had to slice through more of the torso to get at the wound. He listened. He tried to hang onto consciousness.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Outside, or perhaps in his own mind, he could see the flashes of fireworks.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"It's just the first thing you do when you make a Dungeons and Dragons party, you know? And okay, maybe I have been playing a lot of D&amp;D with some CDC guys this year. Those are some serious nerds. But you're not going get anywhere without a cleric, you know? Where the hell is our cleric?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter patted Johnny's hand as he stuffed in more gauze. "I heal," he assured the older boy.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"Not damn fast enough, my friend. This is a lot of blood."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter closed his eyes. He thought of MJ, of balls dropping, of a kiss he'd missed at midnight. "Who do you play?" he whispered. He wanted to ask Johnny a million questions, like why was the penthouse empty, and where was Susan and Ben and Reed, and why wasn't he, Johnny, kissing anyone at midnight? But Peter couldn't get those questions out and wanted more of Johnny's rolling cadence to wash over him, so he asked an easier question. "In D&amp;D?"</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>"A bard."</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Letting his eyes close, Peter nodded, as if that made sense. He dropped into that healing stasis halfway between this world and the world of dreaming. In that gray plane he could see Johnny hook him to an IV and he could also see something else, a vision of the night he could have had: a warm blanket, a smiling girl, a hug from a friend.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He breathed in deep and felt his cracked ribs knit back together, little by little.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It wasn't the New Year he had envisioned, the one he'd wanted. But maybe it was the New Year that fit in with the old. Dangerous. Vital. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>More fireworks painted the sky in technicolor, and Johnny pushed back Peter's damp hair. </i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Peter felt a kiss on his forehead.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The night inched towards dawn.</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm on lockdown in New Jersey, which is experiencing a pretty bad outbreak at the moment. I have my siblings, parents, and three dogs, including a new seven week old puppy. I hope you are comfortable and bored and holed up somewhere. I hope you're not too scared. </p><p>My goal for writing this was to someday look back on it and remember what a weird time this was. I've been writing fanfiction since I was 11 years old. It's my diary. And I think this is a moment to remember. </p><p>Stay healthy. Stay connected. Half the human race is on lockdown. This is an uncharted territory. Here there be dragons territory. But it won't be forever.</p><p>I hope to add a second chapter to this story when we start to see the other side to this thing. Until then, take care of yourself. You are important to me.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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